Speaking Back: Queerness, Temporality, and the Irish Voice in America

Speaking Back: Queerness, Temporality, and the Irish Voice in America Gavin Doyle A Thesis submitted to the School of English at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2018 DECLARATION I, Gavin Doyle, declare that the following thesis has not previously been submitted as an exercise for a degree, either in Trinity College, Dublin, or in any other University; that it is entirely my own work; and that the library may lend or copy it or any part thereof on request. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. Signed_____________________ Gavin Doyle i SUMMARY This thesis examines the intersections of Irishness and queerness in the work of five contemporary American writers and cultural figures: Alice McDermott, James McCourt, Peggy Shaw, Eileen Myles, and Stephanie Grant. Despite the wealth of critical scholarship in the areas of Irish-American literature and culture, the queer Irish voice in America remains almost entirely neglected. The thesis argues against the mutual trends in Irish-American and gay and lesbian cultural, social, and historical discourses that centralise “progressive” narratives in terms of socio-economic and legal advances. In so doing, the project privileges the bilateral backward glance in the writing of queer scholars such as Heather Love, José Esteban Muñoz, Elizabeth Freeman, Benjamin Kahan, Jack Halberstam, Judith Butler, and David L. Eng, and in the critical interventions of Irish and Irish-American critics who challenge the truncated “success” story of the Irish in America. The authors in this thesis speak back to an oppressive present by feeling backward toward the past as a means through which to trace alternative routes for the future. Firstly, the introduction maps out the contentious cultural geographies and queer exclusions performed at the St Patrick’s Day parades in New York and Boston, presenting the conflict as an attempt on the part of the Irish queer organisations to write non-normative sexual identities into the narrative of Irish-American identity. The impossibility of Irish queerness on the streets has been by and large matched in the literary and cultural archives. This gap in scholarship is addressed in the introduction, and the thesis is presented as a step towards including queerness as a mode of reading Irish- American texts. Crucially, the trope of backwardness is utilised as a key reading strategy that opens up alternative ways of interpreting representations of Irishness in America. Reading Alice McDermott’s Irish-American historical fiction, with a particular focus on her 2013 novel, Someone, chapter one coactivates discussions around the bachelor and spinster in both queer and Irish studies, examining the ways in which the histories emerging from each have overlapped and have been intimately intertwined. While the queer potentialities of the bachelor and spinster are numerous, McDermott’s handling of the figures produces lace-curtain veiled characters left lurking behind windows or in the folds of the heteronormative family cell, sexless and left behind. Chapter two explores the themes of orality and Irish storytelling in James McCourt’s third book of prose, Time Remaining (1993). Written at the height of the AIDS crisis in the ii United States, McCourt’s narrative meditates on the issues of memory and mourning in the wake of the epidemic, and storytelling becomes a crucial strategy of memorialisation. Chapter three of the thesis examines the queer performance work of Peggy Shaw. Drawing on Jack Halberstam’s notion of “female masculinity,” José Esteban Muñoz’s theoretical concept of “disidentification,” and Elizabeth Freeman’s work on “temporal drag,” this chapter discusses Shaw’s staging of Irish-American lesbian gender. In her 1994 solo production, You’re Just Like My Father, Shaw both invokes and torques the historical and cultural iconography of the “Fighting Irish,” challenging the gender, sexual, and ethnic assumptions undergirding that image. Applying the psychoanalytic phenomenon of melancholia, Freud’s premier theory of loss, chapter four examines the ways in which Eileen Myles’s autobiographical fiction represents twentieth-century working-class Irish-American ethnicity as an identity profoundly structured by loss and mourning. Myles’s construction of Irish diasporic and cultural identity in their writing traverses the spatial, ideal, and bodily remains of histories of loss, and produces, in emotional and imaginative forms, the obsessive refusal to leave the dead behind. Reading Stephanie Grant’s 2008 novel, Map of Ireland, an imaginative return to the scenes of Boston’s 1974 school desegregation plan, the final chapter illuminates the ways in which the legacies of Irish racialisation and Irish-black relations in the United States since at least the mid nineteenth century are intimately bound up in shifting discourses of gender and sexuality. The chapter sets out to ask the contentious question of whether lesbian subjectivity and same-sex desire in particular can provide the radical potential to challenge ideologies of white supremacy and whether queerness has the power to redraw lines of solidarity in the history of Irish-Black relations. Finally, the conclusion simultaneously takes a backward glance at the discussion in the thesis and looks forward to future cultural engagements with the intersections of queerness and Irish-American identity. With increasingly neoliberal strategies of kinship becoming the political goals of gay and lesbian groups, queer backwardness remains a crucial tool with which to challenge the straight temporalities of the present and future. The conclusion suggests additional routes along which to trace articulations of queer Irish-American identity in literature and culture, pointing to future projects that would do well to feel backward in order to forge ahead. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Firstly, Dr Paul Delaney in the School of English has been an ideal supervisor. I express my sincerest gratitude to Paul for his always careful and sensitive reading of my work, and for providing invaluable encouragement over the past four years. I thank Diane Sadler at the School for all her support, chats, and nibbles. I also wish to express my indebtedness to Dr Philip Coleman for his encouragement, advice, and for the invaluable gift of a copy of The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America. Beyond Trinity, Anne Mulhall has been a constant source of support. Without her intellectual rigour, I would not be at this point in my academic career. Thanks are also due to the wonderful Ellen McWilliams at the University of Exeter, who had enough faith in my work to help me get it published. I thank the Irish Research Council for funding the first three years of my PhD degree. For indispensable financial assistance during my final year, I am grateful to many: to Katy, student financial officer at AIB in Rathgar; to Paddy Gillick at the Academic Registry; to Bernadette Hogan in the Examinations Office; and to Emma Skelton at Trinity Careers Service. My earnest gratefulness must go to James McCourt, Eileen Myles, Peggy Shaw, and Stephanie Grant for taking the time to speak with me about their work and what it means to be queer and Irish in America. And, of course, to Vincent Virga for his warm hospitality in Mayo. I extend my sincerest gratitude to Poetry Ireland, who were instrumental in getting Eileen Myles to Ireland for a public reading of their poetry in 2017. I wish to extend much gratitude to Ed Madden for granting me a travel award to attend and participate in the biennial Queering Ireland conference at the University of South Carolina in 2017. For their guidance on my work at Queering Ireland, I must offer thanks to Jack Halberstam and Fintan Walsh. Linda Dowling Almeida and Marion R. Casey, of the Glucksman Ireland House, offered generous support during my archival research trip to New York University’s Archives of Irish America at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. The NYU Fales Library staff enthusiastically provided help and guidance on the Split Britches material I consulted for chapter three. It was a privilege and joy to spend time at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. Between the organised chaos of books, boxes, and filing cabinets, I was granted rare access to the Anne Maguire and ILGO special collections, as well as Eileen Myles material and Peggy Shaw ephemera in the general collections. Many thanks are iv due to Duke University for awarding me a travel bursary to attend the annual Feminist Theory Workshop in Durham, North Carolina, in 2018. I am particularly grateful to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University for awarding me a Visiting Graduate Fellowship, which allowed me to travel to New Haven and access essential archival material, particularly the papers of James McCourt and Vincent Virga. Thank you also to the ever helpful and patient library staff at the Beinecke. Writing a PhD thesis can be an isolating experience at times, but the work presented herein has not been written in a vacuum. For their eye for detail, time, generosity in feedback, and sustaining friendships, I thank Aoife Dempsey, Stephen O’Neill, and Brian McManus. The past four years have thankfully introduced me to new colleagues who have already become old friends: the incomparable Jane Mahony; Ellie Payne, who, contrary to the name, is always an absolute joy to be around; and Jonny Johnston, whose wit and perspective taught me that “as long as it rhymes, everything will be fines.” I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many more brilliant people: Ellen Finn, Kate Brophy, Peter Dunne, Peter West, Kate Smyth, and Nora Moroney have been among the most brilliant.

Load more